Winter Overture
by vodkaquiet
Summary: Levi is crippled and Mikasa takes care of him.


Levi can't feel his legs. He knows they're there. He can see the outline of his toes under the sheet, but he can't move them.

Mikasa stares at him with an expression he can't quite decipher. Something between anguish and horror twists her pale face. Pale? He remembers her being sun kissed, but in the moonlight she looks sallow and small. Either way, he wants to break it until there's nothing looking back at him.

He wishes she would go. Just get the fuck out and stop looking at him like he was something to be pitied, but she doesn't leave.

Not even when he screams. Not even when he drags her through memories she'd rather forget. Not even when he refuses to eat, throwing the plate across the room. His skin crawls at the mess he's made. The stain on the carpet sets his teeth on edge. She cleans it eventually. Using too much vinegar when she does, the room reeks and his nostrils sting and he _knows _there's still the outline of a stain like a scar on pristine skin or a crack in marble.

Her presence mocks him. She stands too far away. Lingering in the doorway like a vampire. Like he has to invite her in, but he never does. She never asks for his permission. She has too much pride for that.

Mikasa stays and he doesn't know why. Out of guilt? This isn't her fault. He isn't her burden. They aren't even friends. He doesn't know the first thing about her, and doesn't want to, but in the days that turn into weeks he notices _everything. _Her eyes are the colour of the sky before a storm and her lips hesitate to smile, but when she does it lights up her whole face. She cracks her knuckles and paces around the kitchen (she has no idea what she's doing.) She falls asleep when he reads to her, her legs curled underneath her, her head on the edge of the bed.

Whole, he wants to be whole. The rain lashes against the window. He used to feel the rain on his skin, but now it raps on the windowpane. Another reminder of the life he stopped living.

She doesn't let him drink or at least not as much as he wants to. He wants to drink through the bleary days and the restless nights. The booze is cheap and terrible, but it eats away at his memories, the good and the bad. It destroys apart of him (and he loves it for that) – the part he can never be again, strong. And that's the joke that draws no laughter from the audience. He was never strong, not like her. He was lucky until he wasn't.

Mikasa has more nightmares than he does (she flinches and whimpers in her sleep, clawing at the sheets.) Maybe that's because he doesn't sleep anymore. He stares at the ceiling in the blinding darkness and when sleep comes it feels like falling, that state between being awake and then suddenly _not. _His sleep is never restful.

He's sick of the bed. Of the stifled air, of the smell of her, of not being able to touch her or at least not in the way he wants to.

She visits him in his dreams. He can feel her hand on his, her head on his chest (she listens.) When he wakes up she's there. Levi runs his fingers through her hair. He knows she's awake. There's a difference in her breathing when she's sleeping. It's frantic. Her nails almost dig into her palms, drawing a thin line of red against the canvas of her skin. The weight of his touch stops her. She stays silent, enjoying _this. _Whatever it is they're not arguing and that's something new. Something she doesn't want to fracture.

* * *

"I don't want," _You to think I'm weak. _"I don't,"

"What?" She snaps. "What is it you don't want?"

Mikasa runs her hands through her hair, her fingers snagging on tangled strands.

"Don't you get it?" His voice is sharp and harsh like the edge of a knife, but it doesn't cut her. She's too familiar with blades, even mental ones to be hurt by his words. Instead it sits between her ribs, patiently waiting to pierce. "I don't want you."

"You're not going to cry are you?" He sneers.

"Fuck you." Mikasa retorts tiredly.

Levi snorts.

"Why are you even here?" He asks. It isn't the first time he's wanted the truth out of her and he doubts he'll get anything close to it today. "Is it because you're lonely?"

She narrows her eyes at him. "I _have _friends."

"If you had anyone, truly had anyone, you wouldn't be here with me."

"And who do you have, huh?" _But me? _She wants him to admit it. To hear the defeat in his voice, but she isn't sure he can be broken any more than he already is.

"So that's why you're here, to torment me?" His voice is a low growl. "Why can't you fucking answer me?"

"Because I feel sorry for you!"

Her hands grip the counter. She wants to break every dish in the sink. To hear the breaking of glass, to feel the shards slice at her flesh. She wants to feel something, even the bad things.

* * *

"She'll be back." Hanji reassures.

"I don't want her back." At that Hanji sighs. She knows the walls he built to keep everyone out have imprisoned him.

"I want her to get as far away from me as possible."

But she does come back. At 3am. Drunk, drunker than he's ever seen her – she can barely stand, but that's still better than him. He isn't sleeping and he doesn't pretend to be.

Mikasa _always _comes back. Always is a promise he can't afford to believe in.

She's too cold to sleep in his shadow, huddled on the dreary rug beside his bed with her arms folded under her head as a pillow and too afraid to sleep by herself so she snuggles up beside him.

"Don't act like you were sleeping." She mumbles. "You were waiting up for me."

"Don't flatter yourself."

"You're…" It isn't that she hasn't noticed before, she's studied his features at length, but her words are always lost to safer ones.

"Isn't it a little late for insults?"

She looks at him through her lashes, her lips drawing back against the things she can't say.

"Tell me a story until I fell asleep?"

Levi sighs. "About what?"

"Something true."

"All my stories are true."

His heart is her favourite story. It drums loudly in her ear. It's always strong. The feel of his skin on hers tells her more than words.

He can't feel her leg over his, but he feels her fingers plucking at the hem of his sweatshirt. Her fingernails brush just above his hip and she kisses the side of his mouth.

Nothing stirs in him.

There's just an ache in his heart.

* * *

She's on the bathroom floor, her legs curled up underneath her. The tiles are cold on her skin. The summer is behind them and winter grips their bones and bruises.

Her elbows rest on the side of the tub. She's trying, unsuccessfully, to only at his face.

"Aren't you going to get in?" Levi smiles; really it's more of a smirk. Still it's the first time she's seen anything other than a scowl from him.

Even with his lips curled up, the corners of his eyes crinkling he looks unreachable. There's an ocean between them and he'll watch her drown before she gets close to him.

He splashes her.

"Stop," Mikasa says.

"I don't want to stop."

She flicks the bubbles off her arm.

"Can you get my back?" Gone is the hesitation in his voice. The brazenness isn't familiarity. It's its own kind of fear.

"You wanted to do this." He reminds her.

He remembers, almost guiltily, how long it took them to get to _this _and now it seems like nothing – only a moment behind them.

"No, it's fine."

Her touch is delicate when her fingers accidentally brush across his shoulder blade. But he knows there's nothing delicate about her. A gentler person would have been broken by this world.

* * *

There's nothing kind about her. There's nothing soft or sweet about the way she grips his hand when she sleeps. She has nightmares and when she bolts up in the middle of the night he can't comfort her the way he wants to. He can't sit up with her and wrap his arms around her, his bony chin cutting into her shoulder, and kiss her open mouth (salty from her tears.)

Levi just puts his hand on her lower back.

Eventually she lies back down, settling her weight against him, and he kisses her. Neither of them go back to sleep.

His lips tremble against her forehead. There's desperation in his kiss, his heart drumming a plea when she pulls away from him.

The night is cold and indifferent to them. They're as foreign to it as they are to themselves. The wind rattles the windows, calling to a part of him that's as unfeeling as his legs. From beyond his tired eyes he sees her smile. He dances with her in the darkness of his dreams.


End file.
